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The Sensationalists is an immersive new dance work that places the audience at the centre of a unique performance experience. In this cross-disciplinary collaboration between Vancouver’s 605 Collective and Theatre Replacement, the artists explore concepts surrounding various sensory phenomena, transforming the traditional expectations of the performance space to play with proximity and interactivity, with the audience mobile throughout a large part of the show. Merging 605’s high-powered physicality and Theatre Replacement’s theatre-making methodologies, this mash-up shifts the relationship between audience and dancer, observer and observed, resulting in a compelling, immediate, and unexpected performance.

The title of the work evokes a double entendre. The Sensationalists are a group of people who gather together in the same space to help each other experience different levels of sensation in order to feel better in their daily lives. But through the performance they also reveal themselves to be a group of exceptional dancers, through which we all experience what it is to be sensational.

The Sensationalists is created by Josh Martin, Lisa Gelley, Laura Avery, Walter Kubanek, Jane Osborne and Lexi Vajda with Sound Design by Gabriel Saloman, Lighting Design by James Proudfoot and Costumes by Leah Weinstein. Directed by Maiko Yamamoto.